


Childish nature

by CureIcy



Category: Magic Kaito, 名探偵コナン | Detective Conan | Case Closed
Genre: Crack, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Inspired By Tumblr, Post-Canon, Slice of Life, more tags will be added, shinichi is DONE, when i stop being lazy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23684143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CureIcy/pseuds/CureIcy
Summary: Shinichi tries to adjust to having his normal body back. There are more complications than he expected, and his parents certainly aren't helping.
Relationships: Hakuba Saguru & Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan, Hattori Heiji & Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan, Koizumi Akako & Nakamori Aoko, Kudou Shinichi | Edogawa Conan & Nakamori Aoko
Comments: 54
Kudos: 347





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: this is the post I'm loosely adapting  
> https://foxyteah.tumblr.com/post/182463334316/you-know-what-id-like-to-see-shinichi-being

“No. Absolutely not.” Shinichi wasn’t going to take this. “I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am! I have my normal body back; why can’t I have my normal life back too?”

“We understand that, really, we just think you may have some trouble adjusting,” his mom said tactfully.

“Your girlfriend is going to eviscerate you once she figures out you’ve been Conan this whole time,” his dad translated. “As a child, you had plausible deniability for a lot more of your strange behaviors. As her best friend since childhood, you’re basically screwed if you spend more than ten minutes around her.”

“And we’d really like you to outlive us, so that’s why she can’t know! We’ve made arrangements for you to stay with a relative while you readjust. ‘Conan’ is going back to America, and you should call Ran in a few weeks to let her know that the case is over, but you’ve received a head injury that you’re still recovering from, and you’re staying in Ekoda until you’ve fully healed.” 

“And I don’t get a say in this, do I.”

“Shinichi, you’re sitting on the counter and swinging your legs.”

“So?” He’d crossed his arms before he even realized it. “Okay, fine. Why can’t I do this on my own terms? I could go to Osaka and stay with Hattori! I don’t even know who you’re sending me off to live with.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it! He’s the son of an old family friend, and can pass for a relative of yours. You’ll be in the same class, and he’ll be able to help you catch up with your homework. Not to mention, he’s _very_ good at keeping secrets, and he’s enough of a troublemaker that you won’t draw too much attention.”

“Why do I feel like both of you are in on the same joke and waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

“Relax, Shinichi! We’re sure you’ll get along like a house on fire!”

* * *

The clearly meant ‘house on fire’ literally. It was something of a miracle they didn’t need to call emergency services.

From the moment the boy introduced himself, Shinichi could just tell something was off. For one thing, there was his _name—_ Shinichi thought he had it bad, but the parents of one Kaito Kuroba seemed to have crammed every possible pun into one name, and Shinichi didn’t like it. 

Then there was the fact that he introduced himself with a sweeping bow and an all too familiar white rose, which made Shinichi’s eyebrow twitch.

“Nice to meet you,” Shinichi lied through his teeth, taking the rose as if it was poisoned. “Co— Shinichi Kudo, detective.” 

...okay, he was going to apologize to Hattori. Old habits died hard. 

“A detective?” Kuroba smirked. “Well, this ought to be fun!”

“Well, I’m glad at least one of us will be enjoying himself,” Shinichi muttered. He almost turned around and got back into the car right then and there, except he could hear his parents driving away behind him. _Damn it._ They’d probably be in Switzerland by tomorrow. If only they’d taken him with.

With that option gone, he took his suitcase and trudged inside. He was going to get his parents back for that.

* * *

It took less than an hour for his suspicions to be confirmed, and that was only because Kuroba insisted on playing the part of a courteous host and dragging him on a tour of the house. It was only afterwards that he managed to unceremoniously dump his luggage in the guest room and do some real investigating in the most suspicious part of the home.

“Ah re re?~ The walls don’t seem to match up. I wonder...” He poked and prodded the portrait, wondering what sort of secrets could be hiding behind it. It was certainly large enough for a child-- no, a _normal sized person, he was a normal sized person_ \-- to fit through, and was set so close to the ground that he could easily step over the threshold. If he could only find the mechanism…

“Hey! What are you doing?” Kuroba’s voice came from behind him, and Shinichi turned to see his new housemate leaning against the door frame. “Did you just say ah re re? Seriously?”

“Uh, no!” Just then, the portrait gave a sharp click, and Shinichi drew back sharply, but not before it had rotated slightly on an axis in the middle. A perfect distraction from his slip-up. “I knew it! I knew you were hiding something!”

“Actually, my family just happens to be dramatic that way.” He crossed the room with a grace Shinichi could only dream of in his current state and smoothly pushed the portrait back into place. “Really, poking around this early? And here I was hoping you’d give me the benefit of the doubt a little longer.”

“You’re Kaitou Kid, aren’t you?” Shinichi accused. “The name, the stage magic, the hair, the secret passage-- and don’t forget I’ve gotten a better glimpse of your face than anyone.”

“That means--” Kuroba gasped in delight. “Tantei-kun? You’re not as tiny as you used to be, but you’ve grown even more spiteful! You were the only one who was both short and clever enough to get a good look at me.”

“What?” He was not expecting to be figured out this soon. “That’s impossible; how could anyone grow up that fast?”

Kuroba shrugged. “Heck if I know; my first guess was always that you were just hellspawn in a child’s body, but I guess a teenage detective works too. You get used to strange things when you’re pretending to be your dead father and chasing immortality while a witch occasionally tries to enslave you with her magic.”

“What do you mean, a witch is trying to enslave you with her magic?”

“Her name’s Akako. You’ll meet her on Monday; red hair, boys fawning over her at every moment, girls either fawning over her or jealous, but mostly both… she also likes to give extremely cryptic and ominous prophecies, so watch out for that.”

It was hard to tell if he really believed in Akako’s powers or if he was just messing with Shinichi. It occurred to him then that his parents absolutely knew about Kuroba being Kid and sent him here anyways. “Witches and magic aside… I take it my parents didn’t tell you about my identity and you figured it out on your own?”

“Uh, yeah? Mom just said she was sending over a friend’s kid to stay for a while. That we had a lot in common, but she figured we’d be like night and day, and that I’d need to just be myself and...” The realization finally dawned in his eyes. “Our parents set us up, didn’t they."

"They knew that I’m the biggest threat to your night job and you’re the reason I have high blood pressure, as if the other heart problems weren’t bad enough. And they left us together on purpose.”

“Temporary truce while we plot our revenge?” Kuroba offered.

Shinichi considered a moment and decided that working with his annoying nemesis was well worth it. “I’m in.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more~ Might have 3 or 4 chapters, idk. I have a google doc with the original post where I delete stuff once I've used it. It's quite fun!

“So,” Kaito clapped his hands gleefully, relishing the growing expression of terror on Kudo’s face, “I’ve already asked my assistant to do some research on your father’s editors, and it turns out one of them is a spy for him in case the rest decide to conspire against him. So really, the plot against him is coming along quite nicely, but in the meantime, your parents had a point about you needing to adjust.”

“You’re not the person I’d choose to learn from, though,” Kudo muttered.

“But I’m the one you’ve got!~” he sang. “Anyways, let’s just go through a normal day together, and I’ll see what I have to work with. I figured we could start out by getting crepes for breakfast, then spend the day together! That way I can see what habits I need to get rid of. And we get to spend some quality time together, an artist and his ungrateful critic.”

“Artists actually create works which enrich society. You just mess around with precious gemstones that don’t belong to you and cause trouble.”

“It’s called being a  _ performance _ artist. The world is my stage, and I arrive at my cue, take the spotlight, and make my exit gracefully.”

Kudo muttered something about deep breaths and blood pressure, before forcing a smile. “Fine. The sooner I get used to being myself, the sooner I can go back to my actual life.”

“Well, this ought to be entertaining!”

“I hope not,” was the muttered reply.

* * *

Kudo’s hopes were dashed in about ten minutes, when he tugged on Kaito’s sleeve. “Kaito-niisan!”

“Is there something you need?” Kaito asked lightly, raising one eyebrow and watching the dawning horror in his eyes.

“Your silence on this matter.”

“I wasn’t going to say a word!” Kaito assured him.

“And yet you still manage to look incredibly smug doing it.”

“What can I say? It’s a talent.” He smiled contently to himself as Kudo went to the stand and ordered, then stood there for an embarrassingly long time before he got out his wallet.

“You aren’t used to paying, are you,” he guessed when the detective returned.

“It’s not that I don’t have the money for it, I just didn’t exactly carry around a wallet.”

“Oh, so that means we should practice, right? From now on, you’re paying any time we buy something!”

“I’ll pay for myself, not you! You can buy your own--” His eyes narrowed. “You do pay for things, don’t you?”

“Of course I do! I always return what I steal, even down to clothing. I prefer a policy of ‘do no harm.’”

“...you’ve literally caused billions in property damage and wasted police resources.”

“I  _ give the gems back. _ No harm done.”

“Didn’t you collapse an entire department store because you were pissed that they paid some salaryman to wear a suit and pretend to be you?”

“It was a Christmas miracle that the building collapsed, and I made sure no one was inside of it first. Besides, the owner had it coming.”

“I can’t convince you that you’ve done anything wrong, can I.”

“Good luck with that. I respect literally no one.” Kaito shrugged. “Also, why are you holding your crepe with both hands? It’s freaking snack sized.”

“This used to be meal sized, okay?”

* * *

“If you say one word about this to anyone, I swear--”

“Wasn’t going to! You probably read the book on murder, wrote a better sequel, and know how to make it look like an accident.”

Shinichi would never think about committing murder, of course, but he had to admit that the fact that Kaito felt threatened by it...well, it wasn’t  _ too  _ bad.

* * *

“You’re planning to rob this place, aren’t you,” Shinichi said within seconds of entering the art museum.

Kuroba turned to him with wide eyes and a pouting expression. “Why on earth would you say that? I am  _ shocked  _ and appalled that you would think so little of our friendship.”

“No, you’re pissed that I figured you out so quickly, and now you’re trying to guilt trip me into dropping it. It won’t work, because we’re not friends.”

“No, but I still find your company entertaining, you know? The world gets boring for us prodigies. And seeing as I don’t exactly have the stomach to solve gruesome murders on my days off, I need some way to keep myself busy.”

“Have you considered knitting?” Shinichi suggested dryly.

“Been there, done that, mastered the craft. I also dabble in chemistry and electrical engineering, but a little moonlight parkour has always been my favorite way to pass the time.”

“When do you even  _ sleep _ ?”

“Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies.”

“How about I keep asking you questions, and you’ll inevitably keep lying to me, and I pick apart your lies and find the truth by my own deductions?”

“Suit yourself!” He shrugged, and walked over to a painting as if he was genuinely intrigued by it and thought it could enrich his life, even though Shinichi knew he was just casing the place in advance.

How was  _ this  _ the person who’s supposed to be teaching him how to act like a normal person again? From what he’d seen, Kid’s civilian persona was no less flashy, and took just as much refuge in audacity as his secret identity. It’s a miracle no one had found him out sooner.

It also raised the question of how helpful he was going to be.

* * *

“As much as I’d love to spend more time with you today—”

“That makes one of us, but sure—“

“—I have a dinner invitation tonight, and I don’t want to be late!” Kuroba said smugly.

“That isn’t code for whatever crime you’re committing tonight, is it?”

“Nope. I haven’t told them about you, so I’m afraid you’re staying home. You know how to use the microwave, right?”

“Of course I know how to use the microwave! How do you think I’ve been feeding myself all these years?”

Kuroba heaved a sigh. “I suppose it would be too much to ask for you to be a master of home cooked meals?”

“In your dreams.” A microwaveable meal tonight would be a small price to pay for a little peace and quiet; maybe he could even do a bit of reading while he was at it. “Who invited you to dinner?”

“The Nakamori family. I basically grew up alongside them, so dinner invitations are fairly common.”

“Ohhhhh,” Shinichi breathed, making connections one after the other. “You’re playing with fire, Kid.”

“Mm.” He nodded, slipping on a light jacket. “Have you ever been in theatre, Kudo? The lights on stage are blinding. You can’t see the audience, only remember the lines you’ve practiced and hope to leave everything on that stage. You can’t even touch the curtains, or else risk ruining the finish and leaving it flammable. There are more mental breakdowns during tech week than any other time of the year.”

“The more extended, poetic metaphors you make, the less I understand you.”

“I’m a theatre nerd. Everything in my life is on fire or about to be, but the show must go on. I’ll dance through flames on my toes if I must.” With that, he shut the door behind him. It was almost a dramatic exit until he leaned back inside and said, “I’m also a sucker for musicals. I’ve got a CD collection in the rec room if you want to listen to some of them!”

(Every single CD was a musical soundtrack. Shinichi checked.)

* * *

“She’s the one who apparently has witch powers, right? Am I supposed to feel anything?” Shinichi tried to surreptitiously gesture to the red haired girl, who was sitting alone and reading a massive tome in latin as if this was a perfectly normal thing to do when one arrived early to school.

“You’re not deeply infatuated, overcome with the desire to become her servant and answer to her every whim?” Kuroba gave him a strange sidelong look.

“No. Is that a bad thing?”

“Well, when she couldn’t seduce me with her magic, she developed a yandere crush on me, tried to kill me a couple times, forcefully subjugate me a couple more...nowadays she’s more helpful, but occasionally she makes another go at it.”

“At what, killing or dating you?”

“Yes,” he answered helpfully. “Here’s hoping she doesn’t do the same to you.”

“I hope you’re not spreading rumors about me.  _ Corvos quia cecidi: sed tamen dici nocte. Non me decipiat vel palumbi, _ ” she said without looking up from her book.

“Now, why on earth would I do that?” Kuroba replied.

“How would I know? You keep your cards close to your chest.”

“Yeah, whatever.  _ J'espère que vous savez à quel point c'est frustrant quand vous parlez latin autour de moi. Je ne comprends pas un mot que vous dites. _ Anyways, this is my cousin.”

“And why should I ca—  _ oh _ .” She’d caught sight of Shinichi, and blinked a few times as if her eyes were deceiving her. “Hm. This is interesting indeed.”

“Get ready to run if things go bad,” Kuroba whispered.

“You reek of death,” she said bluntly, tapping her sharp nails against her desk.

“I’m sorry?”

“The scent...it’s cloying. It follows you, and yet I can’t sense anything strange about your aura. How are you concealing it?”

“I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” he said carefully. “I’m a detective, so I go to a lot of crime scenes.”

“So, are you a shinigami, then? Or perhaps the servant of one...what sort of powerful sorcery could shield you from my vision?”

“Did Kuroba put you up to this?” It seemed in character for him; maybe she was another member of the Shakespeare club. It would explain where he got his sense of drama, at least.

“As if!” She tossed her silky red hair contemptuously. “I would never take orders from a magician like him. His silly stage tricks are nothing compared to the raw might of sorcery, the intoxicating feeling of power at your fingertips, of spirits bound to your will and the Eyes of the High Fae Court upon--”

“Akako-chan!” A messy-haired brunette launched herself across the room and glomped the girl, who looked like she had no idea what to do with her arms and ended up awkwardly returning the hug. “Aoko didn’t see you at school on Friday, and she was worried!”

“I appreciate your concern, but I was fine.” Akako carefully detached herself from the hug. 

“Of course! Akako is always perfect. Are you using a new conditioner? Your hair smells wonderful!”

“Yes, I am!”

“Who’s this?” Her gaze turned to Shinichi, then to Kuroba. “I swear, if this is another one of Kaito’s pranks…”

“Not a prank, I’m his cousin,” Shinichi explained quickly.

“Kaito doesn’t have any cousins. And Aoko would know.”

“He was disowned,” Kuroba said casually, causing Shinichi to fall out of his seat. He may have been unsteadily sitting criss cross applesauce to begin with, but that was irrelevant.

“I was not disowned! The way I heard it,  _ your _ side of the family was disowned!” Shinichi said, climbing back into his seat. A few more students were starting to trickle in now, giving curious glances to the two of them.

“There was a family feud.”

“It’s probably his fault.”

“Anyways, he’s living with me for a while while he’s recovering from a head injury that affects his coordination, among...other things.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you!” Aoko said cheerfully. 

“Hm. I had no idea the great detective of the east and the Kaitou Kid were so closely related,” a blonde boy drawled. Hakuba, Shinichi recalled. (He wasn’t alone in figuring out Kid’s identity! Ha!) “I wonder, is he anything like you, Kuroba-kun?

“I told you, I’m not Kid. And he’s much more like you. A freaking Holmes nerd.”

The two of them locked eyes at the same time; Hakuba breathed out a tiny puff of air. “ _ Finally _ .”

“No one around me appreciates his work!” Shinichi said passionately. “It’s like I’m the only one who sees his genius for what it is!”

“I know! I have to go to conventions and meetups to even find any fans!”

“But now that we’re in the same class, we can talk about our favorite cases!”

“Is this what love feels like?” Hakuba whispered reverently.

“Agh,” Kuroba moaned, planting his face firmly in his desk. “I’ve created a monster, Aoko. A terrible, nerdy monster.”

* * *

“Everyone, we have a new student! Why don’t you introduce yourself?”

Shinichi looked out at a sea of faces. “I’m Shinichi Kudo. Please treat me kindly.”

He bowed and took his seat, just grateful that he hadn’t managed to mess up his introduction this time. He’d practiced from the privacy of his room last night, trying to make sure he wouldn’t give the wrong name.

He put his knee up on the chair before correcting himself and sitting down normally, his feet just sort of...resting on the floor. He still wasn’t used to that. After being dwarfed by basically any chair he sat in, it was strange that now everything fit him right.

At least no one had noticed.

* * *

Shinichi quickly came to realize that the gaping hole in his education wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been, but still significant enough to be a problem.

He thought his first day was a decent preview of the rest of his schooling; he read often enough that he had nothing to worry about as far as English or Japanese, he’d lost some of his speed at math and hadn’t learned a lot of the newer concepts. The history curriculum, he’d picked up a basic knowledge of through his own curiosity a few years back, but science was now his worst subject. They’d started studying chemical nomenclature, which he’d have to sit down with some flash cards and memorize.

At least his “injury” gave him a free pass from gym. He was trying to arrange physical therapy to regain his previous physique, but it was proving more difficult than expected.

He left his first day of school with a bag full of work he only somewhat knew how to do, and the feeling that he’d started something substantial.

* * *

Okay, he was not used to using his real name. After over a year doing his best not to respond to it, it barely even registered until Hakuba tapped lightly on his desk.

“Kudo-kun.”

“Oh! Right, present!” His voice came out several octaves higher than he’d intended-- crap, he’d slipped back into his Conan voice.

Shinichi hid his head in his arms and wondered if it would be possible to poison himself again and shrink small enough to avoid all the judgemental glares he was sure he’d be receiving.

Instead, he felt someone gently patting him on the back. Aoko, he guessed.

“Hey, don’t worry about it! If anyone makes fun of you, Aoko will beat them up with her mop!”

He felt a strange kinship then, with the girl who could have been Ran’s messy haired twin sister and acted half her age. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

“Ooh, are we committing assault and battery over here? Don’t tell the detective; he’ll pick apart your alibi in a second,” Kuroba teased. 

“Idiot! Aoko wouldn’t try to hide what she did, because she’s not ashamed of fighting bullies!”

...she was brave for sure. Shinichi lifted his head and found half the class looking at him with expressions varying from sympathetic to encouraging.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am freaking N Y O O M I N G through this and it's a blast  
> All of the characters bounce off each other so very nicely

Sure enough, the students of Ekoda high took him in with open arms. A few of them approached Shinichi for casual conversation, and the soccer club even asked him to join after seeing him absently trying to bounce a soccer ball off his knee. He had to refuse, saying his coordination still wasn’t good enough and he didn’t want to risk a second injury, but it was tempting. He ended up joining a few practices anyways, trying to regain his lost coordination now that his limbs were much longer than he’d expected.

He fell on his face a lot (and the fall was so much longer than he remembered) but at least Kuroba wasn’t around to see it. And he could feel himself slowly improving as he grew accustomed to the extra mass. He’d lost a lot of the strength he’d built up as a soccer player, but at least his muscle memory seemed mostly intact. Despite not coming to any of their games and being a mediocre player, the team treated him like one of their own.

Kuroba-- or rather, Kid-- gave him acting lessons after school, in between homework and his attempts at some semblance of a social life. It was exhausting, trying to catch up on so much missed work when the only mental challenge he’d had for a year was solving difficult cases. With schoolwork, there was rarely a key moment of understanding when all the evidence came together; rather, it felt like a never ending trudge through packet after packet of make-up work.

He was so tired from a particularly grueling chemistry unit, he almost missed the fact that Kid was holding another heist in two weeks.  _ Oh well, _ he decided, purchasing two bottles of coffee in advance at a vending machine. _ In the absence of sleep, caffeine will usually do the trick.  _

His teachers were understanding, at least, when he dropped a hint that he’d been involved in the takedown of an international crime group. Still, an entire year of missed work wasn’t exactly something he could smile and ask them to excuse. He thought he got a pretty good deal, all things considered.

The Nakamoris were even more welcoming, saying that he was practically family by extension. Aoko— and she insisted he call her Aoko— was always kind and bubbly, telling him stories of growing up with Kuroba as well as whatever Akako had been doing lately. Her bickering with him was amusing, to say the least-- it was nice to watch Kuroba antagonizing someone else for a change. She’d grown up around him and knew him well enough to hold her own in their banter.

(He still wasn’t sure he’d forgiven the thief for dressing like he was going out for real, walking around the neighborhood for half an hour each way, and letting Shinichi come to the conclusion that he’d crossed town when the Nakamori family literally lived next door.)

It had been hard at first, looking at Aoko out of the corner of his eye and seeing Ran. But Aoko was her own person, and frankly one of the nicest Shinichi had met in a while. She was refreshingly honest, never made fun of him when he slipped back into childish habits, and even had more than a few herself. She merely shrugged when he slipped and called her neechan, matched his exaggerated hand gestures in conversation, and didn’t flinch when he slipped into the higher register he’d used as Conan.

Shinichi decided that Aoko was his second favorite person in Beika, second only to Hakuba. It was hard to compete with a fellow teenage detective who even owned and regularly wore Sherlock Holmes cosplay, but she came admirably close.

With Kuroba’s complaints as background noise, Shinichi and Hakuba had quickly bonded over their love of Sherlock Holmes, discussing case after case, and then on to their own personal cases, and how they took inspiration from Holmes in their lives. It was a whirlwind sort of friendship, the sort he’d never imagined could happen to him.

He couldn’t explain that he knew Kuroba was Kid, of course-- he shared his suspicions, yes, but couldn’t provide the proof he had. He received glares and exasperated protests of “I’m not Kid, so knock it off!” from the magician every time, but to be perfectly honest, it would be much more suspicious if he, a detective,  _ didn’t  _ think Kuroba was moonlighting as a thief. (How did no one else know it? He was  _ terrible  _ at hiding his secret identity.)

And then, of course, there was Akako Koizumi, a puzzle he still couldn’t quite figure out. She kept insisting that there was a supernatural explanation behind his death magnetism, and he was continually baffled by the way she performed simple but impossible magic tricks with more… well ...slitting open the bellies of animals and divining from their organs. She insisted that what she was performing was sorcery, and she was the mortal enemy of magicians such as Kuroba, but Shinichi knew there was a trick to it. There always was; he just couldn’t figure it out. And so with her insistence that he was supernatural and his that she was mundane, they were like a pair of wolves cautiously circling each other, trying to figure the other out.

She wasn’t supernatural, but she certainly was dangerous. Shinichi had good enough instincts to know that. But all she was doing was observing and making hypotheses out of myth and legend for his “aura of death” or whatever that meant, and she certainly seemed friendly enough under the influence of Aoko’s affection.

Ekoda wasn’t the same as Beika, but it certainly had its charms.

* * *

After half an hour of struggling, Shinichi decided to finally swallow his pride and ask for help with his homework. But not from Kuroba, of course. No, he just texted Aoko.

**Shinichi:** is there any chance you understand the current chemistry unit? I’ve been having trouble with it.

**Aoko:** Can’t Kaito help you with it?

**Shinichi:** Technically, yes

**Aoko:** Aoko doesn’t understand

**Shinichi:** Shinichi doesn’t want to learn from him

Shinichi realized it as soon as he pressed send. “Why am I like this,” he asked the ceiling. Fortunately, there was no response. Still, he was trying to teach himself to be  _ less  _ childish, not more.

**Aoko:** how come you and kaito fight and call each other by your surnames? You said you were cousins, but you don’t act like it

**Shinichi:** My family is...complicated

**Shinichi** : I didn’t even know we were related until my parents dumped me on his doorstep and said they wanted us to work things out before running off to Europe.

**Shinichi:** Not the most pleasant surprise when you’re trying to recover from head trauma

**Shinichi:** And our personalities clash, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. So we’re not on great terms

It wasn’t a complete lie, really. Just replace “related” with “apparently a friend of the family and implicitly off-limits for arrest” and “head trauma” with “struggling to catch up on a year of missed life while learning how to act his age again” and you basically had the truth.

**Aoko:** It doesn’t seem that complicated to me

**Aoko:** Even if your family is messy and makes mistakes, you forgive them because that’s all you have. That’s what family means. 

Well, that was actually quite a profound sentiment, except Kuroba wasn’t actually family.

**Shinichi:** Want to do a study group, then? Maybe he can help up both

**Aoko:** Can Akako be invited? She’s very good at literature and math, but keeps arguing with the history teacher

**Shinichi:** We might as well invite Hakuba as well

**Aoko:** Assuming Kudo-kun doesn’t just read the whole time, like he sometimes does during class :/   
**Shinichi:** It’s force of habit! And I only do it in English class. I’m rereading Agatha Christie’s novels in the original language, so it’s a perfectly acceptable use of my time.

* * *

Shinichi had resolved to wait a week at least, maybe two, between Conan’s departure and his arrival in Beika, but after struggling through another difficult exam on Friday, he decided to throw that plan out the window.

Was it a bad idea? Quite possibly. But everything about this was a bad idea, and frankly he’d rather suffer the consequences of his own mistakes than someone else’s at this point. So he hopped on a train to Beika without even stopping to drop off his school bag, frantically tried to convince Kuroba via text that he hadn’t been kidnapped (seriously, he wasn’t  _ that  _ accident prone, he’d just forgotten to let his housemate know where he was headed), and arrived not long after.

Despite appearing much smaller than it had last time he’d been here as Conan, the Mouri detective agency seemed even more imposing now. He knocked twice and took a step back, and after about a minute of waiting, the door opened.

“Down here,” Kogoro said from about a meter below where Shinichi was expecting.

Right. Adults are not that much taller than you, Shinichi reminded himself. You don’t have to look up to meet their eyes anymore. “Sorry. I was wondering if I could talk to Ran?” He peered around the man who’d taken care of him for the past year, looking for her distinctive hair and finding it quickly enough. She looked up and met his eyes, then gasped.

_ Don’t call her Neechan, don’t do it, don’t do it-- _

“Shinichi!” Ran set down her notebook on the table and ducked under her father’s arm to get closer to him. “You’re back!”

“For a little while, yeah.”

Kogoro gave him an unimpressed look. “What, are you going to run off again in an hour?”

“It’s not that urgent; I just need to leave in time to take the train back to Ekoda!” He moved to check the time on his watch, realized he wasn’t wearing a watch, and checked his phone instead. Kuroba had descended into a near incomprehensible string of kaomojis interspersed with explanations of how someone could pretend to be him if he’d really gotten himself in trouble. They were surprisingly detailed, which made sense given how often he probably locked people in closets and stole their clothes and identities at heists. Shinichi set his phone to silent. 

“Ekoda? Why are you staying there?” She looked like she wanted to say more, but the entryway was getting crowded with the three of them. “Here, come in! I’ll make you tea, and I want you to explain everything.”

“Of course.” He followed her inside, taking a seat on the couch. Kogoro retreated to a safe distance to watch Okino Yoko concerts on his phone, but not before giving Shinichi a death glare.

Ran came back with the tea a minute later, barely steeped. It wasn’t like her to cook anything halfheartedly, even if that something was just tea. She must have been really impatient.

“You know that case I’ve been on?” She nodded. “Most of the information on it is still classified, but it turned out to be more dangerous than I’d expected. Once I was part of it, I couldn’t really come back. I had to stay off the radar so they wouldn’t find me; I had time to call you, at least, but coming back for too long would be risky. We finally brought the culprits down, but I ended up getting injured.”

“How?” She looked like she was five seconds away from wrapping him in blankets and keeping him inside.

“I...may have caught a lead pipe to the head,” he admitted. That much was true, at least. “It messed up my motor control, and a few other things.”

“Is that why you’re swinging your legs?”

He hadn’t realized he was doing that until she pointed it out, crap. “Yep,” he said with a strained smile. “It’s not that bad, really. Just inconvenient. It doesn’t even hurt anymore!”

“I hope you recover soon. I missed you, you know?”

“I missed you too,” he said softly. “It shouldn’t take too long. My physical therapist says a month at most.”

“Are you keeping up with your homework okay?”

“It’s,” taking up all the free time he had, “difficult, but not impossible. I’ve got a study group in Ekoda.”

“Oh.” He caught sight of a stack of textbooks that she was gazing mournfully at, and realized what it meant. She’d been planning on offering to tutor him. “I guess you have everything you need there.”

“Ran—” He barely caught himself before attaching the honorific. “It’s not like that. I want to come back, but the way I am now... I feel like with my injury, I’m still caught up in the case. I’m so busy trying to recover that I won’t have time to give you the attention you deserve. I’ll try and visit you more, but please wait just a little longer for me.”

He didn’t address her in any way that was suspicious, but he  _ also  _ didn’t realize he was giving her the puppy-dog eyes until it  _ worked _ .

“Oh, all right…” Ran sighed. ”I know how you are. But you’d better come back to me for good, you hear me?” 

Shinichi wasn’t sure how to feel about this. At the very least, Kuroba’s lessons in poker faces made his internal screaming a lot less noticeable.

  
  


* * *

Kaito wasn’t a morning person. Being perpetually sleep deprived tended to have side effects like that; there was a reason the one time he’d been caught off his guard was a morning, after all. He liked to wake up slowly if possible, with a nice sugary drink if the mood struck him. He was doing just that when he saw it.

Kudo approached an unfamiliar coffee machine, poured the entire pot into the second biggest cup he owned, and drank from it. With no sugar, no milk, nothing. Not even cheap substitutes for sugar or milk! And he had the gall to close his eyes and smile indulgently _ , _ like he  _ enjoyed _ it or something!

“You monster,” Kaito whispered, clutching his mug of pure chocolate syrup to his chest.

Kudo took a long sip, staring Kaito in the eye the entire time. “I think I can live with that.”

Kaito, hands shaking from the stress (okay, he may have been playing it up, but that was just  _ unnatural _ ) grabbed an entire bag of marshmallows from the cabinet and dunked half into the mug, vanishing the other half into a secret compartment in his jacket. He pointed dramatically at Kudo. “Begone, fiend! Take that foul concoction back to the pits from whence you crawled!”

Kudo gave him a dead-eyes stare. “I  _ wish _ . You can pry this from my cold, dead hands at the peak of rigor mortis twelve hours after my time of death, give or take. Assuming I’m left at room temperature.”

“I can’t un-know that, ugh.” He moved to the baking cabinet and added a few scoops of sprinkles from the canister, and then a handful of gummy bears. (What? It was his largest mug.)

“You should really eat more fruits and vegetables, you know. You’ll rot your teeth.”

“They’ve brainwashed you!”

“What are you talking about? A healthy body supports a healthy mind. It’s why I play soccer and—“

“Nope! Nooooo, you’ve just been convinced by all the adults that you have to eat your vegetables before you have dessert! Well, I’m having my dessert now, and no one can stop me!”

“You make less sense every day,” Kudo muttered, taking another sip. “You know, maybe—“

“I’m not listening,” Kaito sang, and jumped out the window. 

* * *

“You’re afraid of fish, aren’t you?”

Kuroba slowly closed the freezer, face blank. “Now what on earth would make you think that, tantei-kun?”

“I’ve been living here for a week, and not  _ once _ have you bought a single meal with fish in it. You’ve even purchased several items that would traditionally include fish, like sushi, but only the kind that doesn’t have fish as a filling. I know you’re not vegetarian, because I watched you eat pork on Wednesday, and it’s not a coincidence, because we  _ literally live on an island.  _ You even took an alternate route to school when the train station put up posters advertising the aquarium’s new turtles.”

“Maybe I’m allergic,” Kuroba refuted. “Why are you teasing me about f-fish? You realize if I so much as touch any, my throat will swell up and I’ll die, right? Pardon me for having bad memories associated with them.”

“I considered that as well, but couldn’t find an epipen anywhere, much less somewhere that would be easily accessible if you started going into anaphylactic shock.”

“You know I like to flirt with danger.” The familiar smirk was back, the one that said  _ we both know but you can’t prove it. _

“At this point, it might be easier to list who you don’t flirt with.” He reached into his school bag and pulled out a fish, kept cool in his lunch box and sealed in several layers of plastic in order to prevent accidents on the off chance that he was wrong. He’d picked it up at the market and handled it with latex gloves that he’d later discarded, all to make sure there would be no risk if Kuroba really did have an allergy, but its effect was… well, just about what he expected.

Kuroba shrieked at a pitch that would be impressive even for Conan, and flailed backwards until he hit the garage door. “Put that-- that  _ thing  _ away!”

“So you admit you’re scared of them.” Shinichi put the fish back, smirking.

“If you tell a single soul or try to use this against me at a heist, your humiliation will be undying,” Kuroba hissed.

“We have too much blackmail material on each other, don’t we.” Ugh, that was frustrating. He probably wouldn’t be able to testify in court. 

“Well, seeing as ruining each other’s lives is out of the question, I suppose we’ll have to settle for mildly inconveniencing each other.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“What do you mean, speak for yourself? You’re not making this any easier on me! Ugh, you’re just as bad as Aoko.” His expression grew mischievous again. “By the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you stacked all of your clothing at the bottom of the closet. It’s like you forgot you’re tall enough to put anything on a hanger!”

“I still have the fish, you know!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, I shall include a bro


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh did I say four parts? I lied. There’s a fifth one that’s almost finished and will be posted once I figure out how to overcome my aversion to looking up names to create one off characters whom I don’t care about. Literally I think it’s a problem that’s holding me back. One of these days I’m going to make like 50 OCs specifically for use in the background of detective Conan fics. I already have two; they’re a pair of oblivious school idols crushing on each other and found a body onstage. I don’t know their names or who dies but I know that.  
> (And to my beta, I'm not calling him seth. If I could call him seth I would have done so already.)

Study groups were difficult at first. They’d quickly found that Hakuba was too paranoid about Kuroba to even consider inviting him over, and the feeling was mutual. Akako claimed her house was full of disembodied spirits who weren’t particularly welcoming to outsiders, which was an oddly dramatic way to say she lived alone and wasn’t a very tidy person, but sure. Aoko gladly offered her house for study groups, but was so delighted to have company that she tried to feed them all the entire time and looked so sad when someone tried to leave that they all ended up staying just a little longer, which turned into missing the last train home. So they ended up studying in cafes instead, a neutral ground where the five of them could hang out.

Apparently, nudging people towards the right answer without clueing them in to his true intelligence had made Shinichi an excellent tutor. Teaching the Detective Boys how to apply deductive reasoning helped too; before, he’d been too impatient with others to slow down and try to understand their thought processes, but now he found he was quite good at it-- when he knew the material. 

“See, you should start with the alpha particles and balance the atomic weight first. You can raise or lower the charge with electrons afterwards,” he explained to Aoko. “And be careful which side of the equation you put the electrons on.”

“Hm...Aoko will try again, then.” She erased her work and started balancing the uranium isotope from scratch, this time in the correct order.

“You’re certainly adept at nuclear chemistry for someone who’s been away from school for so long,” Hakuba noted.

“I picked it up in Hawaii,” Shinichi instantly responded, then realized it only raised more questions now. He should have just said the truth, that he’d learned it for a case where the culprit was obsessed with Schrödinger’s cat.

“You learned how to balance nuclear equations in  _ Hawaii _ ?”

“Maybe Aoko’s family should go; she can’t get the hang of it...” Aoko muttered. She was quite bright; maybe not quite a prodigy, but certainly gifted, and even she was struggling to wrap her mind around the concept. Electrons in particular were throwing her off.

“Uh, yeah! I didn’t feel like swimming, and I found an interesting scientific journal that made several references to nuclear chemistry, so I decided to go to the library and find some resources on it so I could better understand it. It’s a good thing, too; that means I can use this unit to dedicate more time to my make up work.”

Kuroba was staring at him as if he’d suggested they gargle leeches for fun. “You learn on vacation? For fun? And here I thought you were smart or something.”

“Well, at least he chooses to use his intelligence for nobler pursuits than you!” Hakuba shot back. “What’s so wrong with researching while on vacation? Don’t tell me you’ve never done it on one of your trips to Europe-- they’re full of such  _ lovely  _ museums, you know.”

“I bet you like to study when you’re off in Europe, don’t you? That’s why you’re defending Kudo-kun and his atrocious use of leisure time!”

“It’s literally a  _ study abroad program! _ It’s not meant to be a vacation!”

“See, there’s your problem. You never take a break!”

* * *

  
  


“Are you sure that branch is thick enough? Aoko doesn’t like the way it’s swaying.”

“It’ll hold me,” Shinichi said confidently, inching his way across the branch. “Here, kitty!”

The cat in question, a light grey tabby with honey colored eyes, gazed suspiciously at him, backing up. Its claws slipped on a leaf, and it gave a panicked yowl.

“Hey, it’s okay, kitty. Just come a little further...” he stretched out one arm, using the other to grab a higher branch for balance, when he heard an ominous creak. The cat’s ears went flat, and it sprang towards Aoko with a hiss.

The branch broke with a crack, and he was left dangling by one arm, fingers gradually slipping. He managed to swing his other arm up and latch on so he wasn’t supporting his entire body weight on just one arm, and sighed.

“Are you okay?” Aoko called.

“For now.”

“Good.” She nodded, holding the fluffy bundle in her arms tighter. “Aoko caught the cat! It scratched her a bit, but I don’t think it’s going to climb any more trees.”

“Well, good for the cat,” he muttered under his breath. “I think I’m a little stuck now...

“Just let go; it’s only a meter!”

“A meter?!? I’ll break my ankle!”

“Aoko hopes you’re not picking up bad habits from Kaito. He’s too dramatic,” she said with a pout. 

It was then that Shinichi looked down and remembered he was significantly taller than one meter, and dropped out of the tree, bending his knees. It wasn’t bad at all. 

“Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be dramatic; my perception of space is one of the things that’s messed up right now.”

“Aoko understands,” she said with a nod. “When Aoko was little, her mom said that she wasn’t allowed to climb on a tree branch if it was any thinner than her arm, because then it wouldn’t support her weight. Maybe that will help Kudo-kun too, if he’s going to climb any more trees.”

...huh. He’d never heard that advice before. His parents believed very firmly in the power of experience as a teacher, which meant he could recognize several poisons and drugs by smell or taste, among other things, and yet somehow proper tree climbing after a growth spurt never made the list. Or even tree climbing in general, really. Apparently recognizing the sensation of cocaine had taken precedence over this. What even was his childhood, really?

Shinichi picked a few wood chips out of his hand while Aoko held tight to the cat, occasionally checking her phone for directions to the address listed on the missing poster.

“Your mom sounds like a really good person, you know,” he said.

“She was.”

* * *

After the seventeenth joke about his height (yes, Shinichi was counting; the crack about short term memory was number fourteen, and that wasn’t even including the more directly age related jokes) Shinichi was just about through with being teased.

He noticed with no small measure of spite that the kitchen was still a mess from yesterday, after Shinichi had walked out in the middle of doing dishes. Good. The damn thief could do his own dishes if he was just going to make fun of Shinichi for pulling up a chair to stand on. As it was, he was sitting at the kitchen table on his tablet, doing research on what looked like a security system and taking notes.

“Don’t you have any shame?” Shinichi complained. “You were working on that in class, too. I can’t believe you haven’t been arrested yet.”

“See, misdirection is much more powerful than discretion. I know exactly what I’m doing.” Kuroba reached up and plucked the sunglasses from his face. “You know, people will start getting suspicious if you keep wearing these.”

“It helps me adjust!” Shinichi protested, snatching them back. “My eyes keep watering in the wind, and I keep trying to push my glasses up without realizing they aren’t there. It’s a compromise.”

“If Superman just switched out his lenses for something darker, don’t you think someone would have figured him out?”

“He wouldn’t be able to use his laser vision then, right? Not to mention he’s solar powered; why would he wear sunglasses?” He was getting off topic. “Maybe I’ll say the injury affected the occipital lobe as well as my motor cortex, and get glasses with sleeker frames.”

“With your face shape? No way you could pull it off.”

“We have the exact same face!”

“Yes, but I can change mine.”

“You’re insufferable.” Shinichi pinched the bridge of his nose, wishing he had some aspirin. Maybe while he was out getting that, he’d take a train to Osaka and try to find a more sympathetic ear in Hattori. “You know what? I’m leaving. I’m just going to pack a bag and stay at a friend’s house, and I  _ will  _ know if you’re stalking me.”

“Cool! If you’re coming back, don’t do it until Friday. Unless you’ve got a gas mask.”

“What exactly are you planning to do while I’m gone?!” And how long had he been planning this, exactly? Had he been harrassing Shinichi just to get him out of his house?

Kuroba grinned, Kaitou Kid shining through stronger than ever. “Chemistry.”

* * *

“Hey, Hattori. Mind if I come over for a couple days?”

“Sure! I’d love to have ya.” His friend’s voice was just as cheerful and loud as he remembered over the phone, and he discreetly turned down the volume so he wouldn’t have his eardrums blasted out.

“Good.” Shinichi sighed, shifting his backpack so the straps weren’t twisted and digging into his shoulder. “Somehow, thanks to my parents, I ended up living with and keeping secrets from someone I don’t particularly like, and I needed to get away for a while.”

“More of those secrets? Geez, can’t yer parents ever give you a break?”

“What’s done is done. I’ll get them back for it.” Actually, as much as he hated to admit it, he’d been leaving that mostly to the thief. Pranks were his specialty, he claimed, and Shinichi had seen enough of them in class to have a grudging faith that his vengeance would be enacted. Besides, schoolwork left him exhausted, and he barely had time to ice his aching wrists at night before collapsing into bed. 

“You’ve gotta have the weirdest parents. Anyways, mine will be out of town, but I’ll get the guest room ready for ya.”

“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” He shifted the phone to his other ear. “Uh, any chance you can have it ready by tonight? I may have stormed out in a huff to prove a point, and I’m fairly certain my housemate is experimenting with knockout gas. Apparently the house won’t be safe until Friday.”

“How do you get yourself into these situations?”

“I ask myself that question every day of my life.”

* * *

“Ah re--” This time, Shinichi realized what he was doing midway through and finished with a rather un-childlike swear. The victim’s girlfriend gave a rather scandalized gasp at his language, but he ignored it. He was pretty sure she was the one who did it anyways, but he couldn’t prove it yet, and all the evidence staged made it look like his best friend was the one who’d committed the crime.

“Ya ever think it would be nice to hang out sometime without all the dead bodies?” Hattori commented.

“Well, it would be very nice if murderers stopped committing crimes,” he gave a pointed look at the woman before remembering that he wouldn’t be so easily ignored at his current size, “but it appears they know our schedules.” 

“Hey, if ya think about it, the crime rate’s still the same, we just run into most of ‘em. Isn’t it better this way, since the culprits get brought to justice? We haven’t let a case go cold yet.”

“You’re right.” Of course he was. “What do you think of the blood splatter pattern here? It doesn’t look consistent with where the death supposedly happened, does it?”

* * *

“It’s not that I mind, but why are you holding my hand?”

Shinichi blinked. “Because we’re crossing the street, and it’s crowded— agh!”

“Old habits die hard, huh.” Hattori led him across, since the middle of a road wasn’t the best place to have a crisis. “Are ya going to give me a break for accidentally calling ya Kudo sometimes, then?”

“I was undercover! You just figured me out and started calling me by my real name every time. I barely even knew you!”

“Aw, come on! I covered it up, didn’t I?”

“Barely.” Shinichi flipped up his hood and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Hey, wait up! I’m sorry, ‘kay? Ya don’t have to run away from me.”

“Hm?” Shinichi blinked, deliberately slowing down his pace. “That’s just how I walk.”

“No, you were walkin’ faster than ya normally do. Though I guess your legs are longer now, so it feels the same, right?”

“You’re right,” Shinichi realized. “ _ You’re right. _ And there’s a reason I haven’t noticed it before, too. Statistically, men tend to walk faster than women, so I wouldn’t have picked up on this development around Koizumi-san or Aoko-chan, since I slow down around them anyways. I don’t like Kuroba-kun, so I wouldn’t be terribly put out if I was leaving him behind, plus he’d probably match pace with me, and Hakuba-kun isn’t a terribly active person, so we hang out in the library rather than going for walks together.”

“So...do ya walk faster than me now ‘cause I didn’t slow down much for yer stubby little legs?”

Shinichi winced. “Can you please not talk about my legs?”

“Ah, sorry ‘bout that.” An awkward pause. “Can I ask why--”

_ “No.” _

Wisely, Hattori dropped the subject.

  
  


* * *

It wasn’t paranoia, it was perfectly justified caution that made Shinichi panic and hide behind Hattori when he saw a girl running up to him with recognition in her eyes. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten that a) he was somewhat famous and it was perfectly reasonable for people to want autographs, as this girl did judging by the pen and paper she was holding, and b) he was the same height as Hattori now, so trying to hide behind him was both stupid  _ and _ useless.

“Ah, sorry about Kudo! He’s just a little shy sometimes.”

“You don’t need to apologize for me!” Shinichi protested.

“I was just wondering...could I get an autograph?” The girl looked like she was close to tears— wait no, she was officially crying now. “I’ve looked up to both of you since the start of your careers, and it inspired me to become a detective someday too! Even if I can’t get famous in high school, I’m going to make my contribution to the world and bring justice! I’ve been studying all I can— I’m sorry, I just interrupted your day, didn’t I?” She sniffled and took out a packet of tissues from her blazer. “I’m sorry, I just got a little emotional and it’s probably creepy. I’m just going to go die in a hole now.”

“Please don’t,” was Shinichi’s immediate response.

“Uh, not literally! Not going to die today. Or any other day soon, although if I don’t learn self defense or self preservation to match my curiosity that’s going to happen sooner rather than later, but, um. You know what, I’m just-- I’ll go and-- bye. Goodbye.”

With that, she rushed off. Hattori raised a hand as if he was going to say something, then thought better of it.

“Well. Uh, sorry. I didn’t think ya still had fangirls like that around here. She didn’t even stick around for an autograph, geez.”

“I think that was the most awkward conversation I’ve had in my entire life, and I barely even said anything..”

“No kiddin’,” Hattori agreed. “I think I woulda preferred if she was one of the entitled ones. At least with those, you can get a restraining order and not feel bad.”

“I almost wish I was Conan again, so I could have just stopped her. No one thinks much of a little kid interrupting or being blunt; I could have just said something along the lines of,  _ ‘Hey, fangirl-neechan! You sure know a lot about Hattori-niichan, don’t you? But he doesn’t know anything about you. My parents said it’s rude if you don’t introduce yourself!’  _ And she would have been so thrown off that she’d actually follow normal social regulations. Which are largely overrated, but still work well enough with strangers.”

“Ya really think that would work, huh?”

Shinichi gave a dry chuckle. “You have no idea what people let their seven year olds get away with these days.”

* * *

“I know ya got some weird habits leftover from yer Conan days, but I really don’t know what yer trying to do.”

“I—“ Shinichi stopped jumping in front of the pantry shelf. “I’m trying to break a year’s worth of bad habits within the span of a month, cut me some slack.”

“Yer waiting for a tall person to notice ya need help, ain’t ya.”

“The fact that I can’t keep these things from you is a blessing and a curse, Hattori.”

* * *

“All right, now I know you’ve been stalking me. I saw you in the window; you knew I was coming.” Shinichi kicked off his shoes and stared down Kuroba, to little effect.

“I wasn’t stalking you.” He twisted a pair of wires together in what looked suspiciously like an unstable, makeshift adapter. The living room was neatly bisected by a clump of cords heading from the magician’s laptop to the flat screen tv. “A little bird told me. Come on, I wanna get started!”

A little birdie? “I  _ thought  _ that pigeon looked suspicious!”

“Dove, not a pigeon. And don’t say that around her; she’ll get mad and start pecking your hand.”

“You disguised a dove as a pigeon to spy on me?”

“Even taught her how to caw like a pigeon. Like me, my birds are masters of disguise, phantoms and shadows of the night.” He produced a dove from his jacket, which chirped delightedly when he stroked its head. “Who’s a good little shadow of the night?”

“You do this just to mess with me, don’t you.”

“Aw, but it’s so fun to see your reaction!”

“Yes, and it’s going to be even fun to kick you in the face this weekend with a soccer ball. Even if I don’t catch you, no one can stop me from chasing you.”

“I can,” he said happily, “but where’s the fun in that? Hold on a second, I want to watch this in HD. Hm, so many cords...”

Shinichi huffed in exasperation and threw himself onto the couch, which made a worrying crack. Kuroba didn’t even glance over; he must have been deep in concentration. Last time he’d given an entire condescending lecture on physics, making up half of the information, and using the same chart in a variety of orientations to illustrate each one of his points.

“What exactly are you watching?” Shinichi asked.

“Oh, just revenge livestream. What are you humming?”

Shinichi abruptly stopped, then closed his eyes and let the song circle through his head until he recognized the melody.

It was the opening to Kamen Yaiba-- the third season, specifically.

It was a good thing he was tone-deaf, because his humming was so bad that no one recognized all of the horrible, off-key children’s songs he’d been humming. 

In hindsight, he’d been doing this for the past three weeks.

“Why is my life like this.”

“That question may be the one thing we have in common. Aaaaaand...send!” A few taps, and Kuroba leaned back contentedly. “Now to watch the chaos unfold.”

The two of them, courtesy of a series of small bugs that Shinichi didn’t ask about, watched his father be harassed by no less than eleven editors, two publishers, and one angry fan who claimed to be his illegitimate daughter. Which, as amusing as it was, was most certainly impossible. One accidental child was perfectly plausible, and Shinichi himself was living proof. Two accidental children, one of them given to a loving couple who forged the documents to make her look like their biological daughter, was illogical, not to mention physically impossible. His parents had made sure there wouldn’t be any more “surprises” after he was born.

“She doesn’t actually believe all the tripe she’s spouting, does she?” Shinichi asked.

“Nah. Karen’s a friend from theatre camp, and as good an actress as they come. She spends the school year in France with her mom, and summers in Japan.”

“She’s enjoying herself way too much.”

“And you aren’t?”

Shinichi refused to dignify that with a response, instead focusing his attention on the screen. A pair of reporters had managed to use the ensuing chaos to ask his mother something that was lost in the clamor, but judging by her reaction, it was probably related to her age. Shinichi hummed happily to himself as he watched-- no, it probably wasn’t a normal reaction to finding out that your parents have knowingly been consorting with criminals behind your back, but the Kudos weren’t exactly a normal family. It was probably fine, right?

“Stop adding your theme music; you’re spoiling the moment,” Kuroba complained.

Shinichi stopped humming the Kamen Yaiba battle theme and started questioning his life choices instead. There were a lot of choices to question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ekoda kiddos are so fun to write I swear. You’ve got a phantom thief who returns what he takes, making him more of a nuisance than a thief, and is terrible at hiding his identity; his love interest, who will beat him up with a mop of all things; a smug detective who has no sense of shame, and a witch who’s actually a normal teenage girl having a crisis. And all of them are low key crushing on each other.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was fun! I should take prompts more often. And by take I don’t mean accept; I mean carefully trawl tumblr for posts that appeal to me and steal them away in the middle of the night to become fics. That kind of prompt taking. Like fae of olden days taking babies!

The day of the heist arrived, and Shinichi found that his coffee supply had somehow mysteriously disappeared from underneath his mattress.

“Thief! Where is it?” He demanded, rapping on Kuroba’s door.

“I don’t know what you mean! I’ve never stolen a thing in my life. Besides a baseball, maybe.”

“You’re an international jewel thief, don’t give me that.”

“Give you what? I give everything back when I’m done with it. And I’m not done with it yet, so there.”

He tried the door, only to find it locked. Actually, on closer inspection, there were old scratches around the lock, particularly the bottom of it. Higher up were smaller scratches with fewer signs of aging and wear, almost as if someone had been trying to pick this lock since they were very small and had gradually gotten better as they’d grown taller.

“How long exactly have you been training to be a thief?” Shinichi asked suspiciously. Most of the incriminating evidence in the house seemed to be hidden behind that portrait he’d discovered on his first day, which was now either locked or sealed somehow. This was the first clue outside of that portrait he’d found, and the only reason he hadn’t investigated sooner was because there were all manner of strange sounds and occasionally a familiar pink gas creeping out from beneath the door every time he got close.

“My training started early enough for me to not question the talents of children.”

Shinichi blinked. “So...you didn’t call me hellspawn in a child’s body because I have the intelligence of an adult?”

“No, it was because your body seemed too small to contain all of that rage. Ever seen _Lilo and Stitch_?”

“Very funny. Now _where is my coffee._ I need it for tonight.” He punctuated the demand with a frustrated kick that made the door vibrate on its hinges.

“What a coincidence! I also have plans tonight. I think I’m going to dress up nice for my night out on the town, you know?”

“You even broke the coffee machine! I brought that from home!”

“The wires of your coffee machine have been relocated, for personal reasons. Besides, haven’t you heard? It’ll stunt your growth.”

“That’s a lie made up by adults who are scared of caffeinated children.”

“Can you blame us? You’re already terrifying enough. If you all were given caffeine and your ambitions were left unchecked, you’d probably overthrow the current government.”

“We wouldn’t—“ Ugh, he’d done it again. He’d slid into the mindset of a child, including himself in that general _we_. “I hate you.”

“Yes, yes, take a number. Since it’s so terribly unfair that I have a detective living in my house, I decided to give myself a head start. Your riddle is in the kitchen!”

Shinichi found himself briefly wondering if he could kick down the door, but sadly his power enhancing shoes were much too small to fit him anymore.

Instead, he went into the kitchen and found sticky notes posted on all of the cabinets, each one with a sonnet and a padlock. Kid clearly wanted more of a head start than he’d stated; the heist note had indicated he planned to make his entrance at half an hour past midnight, and it was 11:47 right now. The train would take about 12 minutes: making his way through the crowd would use up several more, but that depended heavily on how late he was. His chances got exponentially worse the longer it took him to solve the puzzle left behind, and seeing as he was already tired from soccer practice and a nasty lesson on graphs that had left his head spinning, he couldn’t be certain he wouldn’t crash. He’d done that yesterday, when he’d fallen asleep in English class for a few minutes before being awoken by a reproachful Aoko.

It would take up too much of his time, except...

“What am I doing?” Shinichi realized. “I’m old enough that I can buy more coffee and drink it in public and _no one can stop me._ ”

He left the house with his wallet and phone and proceeded to do just that. He’d solve the riddles when he felt like a little mental stimulation, not out of desperation. It felt nice to have some semblance of control over his life for once.

***

“I’m early, right?” Shinichi asked, jogging up to his friend. He’d bought four whole bottles of coffee while he was still riding the high of feeling like no one could stop him, and now took one out of his bag and uncapped it.

“Seven minutes, forty point two three seconds.” Hakuba snapped his pocket watch shut, but didn’t put it away. “Have you ever been to a heist before?”

“Yep!” Most of the heists he attended had been as Conan, though, so he’d have to pretend to be a relative newcomer. “Well, one heist. It was a long time ago, though. Is he always on time even to the second?” He knew his friend was… well, some would say pedantic regarding the time, but Shinichi thought it was an admirable and underappreciated trait of his.

“As reliable as a train,” Hakuba answered. “If he has one redeeming quality, it would be his punctuality.”

“I thought his best quality was non-violence?”

“No, that’s merely basic human decency.”

“Fair.” Shinichi nodded, taking a sip and scanning the crowds inside for anyone who looked suspicious. The museum’s curator seemed strangely upbeat; maybe he was Kid in disguise? Well, he’d find out in a minute. “I mostly work homicides-- you know how Koizumi-san keeps claiming that--”

“--death follows you like a shroud, and the hounds of hell nip at your heels for the scraps that fall from your curiously unstained hands?” Hakuba finished dryly. “Yes, I’m aware. You seem exceptionally unfortunate in that regard. My condolences.”

“Luck is all there is to it, nothing supernatural. But I do encounter a lot of murder cases, which is why it’s occasionally refreshing to handle a theft.”

“Certainly understandable.” He glanced at Shinichi curiously. “Are you positive you’re up to this? Heists are certainly safe so long as Inspector Nakamori is in charge, but I’ve noticed your perception of space seems to be heavily damaged by your injury. Chases tend to be physically and mentally demanding; I hope you’re not pushing yourself too hard.”

“Don’t worry,” Shinichi assured him. “If anything, heists feel like a break from normal life!”

“Heists, plural?” Crap, he’d slipped up. Thankfully, Hakuba didn’t seem suspicious yet, just vaguely confused. “I thought you’d only been to one of them.”

“Well, I’ve seen a couple of them on the news,” Shinichi said. He decided to change the subject before he could dig himself any deeper. “Given his skill, it really is a blessing that he isn’t typically violent. Trust me, a master of disguise who’s been hiding from the police this long could do a lot more damage if they didn’t follow certain rules.”

“I suppose that’s fair,” he conceded. “It’s still infuriating how little respect he shows for the police. It’s like he exists purely to spite the law! And then he has the gall to insist it’s _my_ job to figure out why he acts so strangely, as if my profession justifies all his lies and half-truths and evasion of justice.”

“I think he just likes poking at authority. The most frustrating part is how good he is at it, though.”

“Well, there’s only one way to deal with him, isn’t there?” Hakuba clicked open his watch again. “To become a good enough detective to wipe that smug grin off his face and force him to tell me why he’s doing this. Four minutes, seventeen point five two seconds.”

“Pursuit of the truth, huh.” It was an admirable goal for self improvement, Shinichi thought. “Hey, don’t you think the curator looks too eager?”

“Does he?” Hakuba tilted his head. “I’m not certain I understand what you mean. Occasionally, since the gems are returned anyways, the owners are more than happy to see the heist notice. It’s an ill-advised sentiment, seeing as Kid could very well decide to keep gems like he used to, but not unheard of.”

Hm. Well, that certainly merited further investigation. “It seems suspicious to me. How much time do we have left? I think I’m going to try talking to him.”

“Three minutes, forty-two point seven nine seconds.”

“That should be more than enough.” Suddenly he was hit with a sense of foreboding-- Kid typically made his entrance with some sort of diversion like turning off the lights, and while he typically didn’t do anything terribly unsavory, there might be those who’d take advantage of the confusion. Shinichi had been present during enough murders in blackouts to have gained at least some sense of caution. “Want to come with?”

“I’d be more than happy to accompany you.” Hakuba, gentleman that he was, offered his elbow. It was surprising, to say the least, but not unpleasantly so. Shinichi accepted, and the two of them made their way over together.

“Sir, we were wondering if you had a moment to talk?”

“Now?” Kazama Hanzo, according to his name tag, blinked in surprise at the two of them. He seemed to recognize Hakuba, but not Shinichi. Well, it only made sense that after spending so much time out of the limelight, his fame would have decreased.

Hakuba gave a winning smile. “No time like the present, is there?”

“Could it wait until after the heist? There are only three minutes left.”

Hakuba’s eyebrow twitched, and Shinichi decided to step in. “We were wondering what sort of precautions you’ve taken to keep the Lily’s Tear safe.”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you; he could be anyone, anywhere. Only I know all of the measures implemented. I can tell you, however,” he grinned, “that Kid won’t have an easy time of it.”

“Thank you for your time,” Hakuba said, tugging Shinichi away. “All right, I know he’s not Kid.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because Kaitou Kid is such a perfectionist, and can't resist an opportunity to show off how good he is. I saw Kazama-san talking to several private contractors before you came, and he didn’t leave the room between then and now. If that really was Kid in disguise, he would have known everything about the security down to the serial number of the gem’s case, and would have told us just to show off.”

Well, that didn’t seem right at all. Although it was possible that Kid had been off his game in their past encounters, since Shinichi most often encountered him outside of his home territory. And outside of the typical motivation for his heists, too. Filing that aside for later consideration, he returned to the more important matter at hand. “Why did you pull me away?”

Hakuba blinked. “He wasn’t Kid, and he wasn’t going to tell us anything that would be relevant to tonight’s heist. I didn’t see any point.”

“Don’t you have any other purpose here than catching Kaitou Kid?”

“I...” He was stiff a moment, then shifting slightly on his feet, and finally checking the time with a brusque motion. “I don’t see what else I’d need to do. I thought our purpose here tonight was perfectly clear.”

“Our purpose as detectives is to find the truth. Something isn’t right here,” Shinichi insisted.

“You think there might be a third party involved?” There was a familiar look in Hakuba’s eyes. “Last month, an entire group of people were arrested at a heist for attempting to murder Kid over a gem.”

“And we both know people have murdered for less than a gemstone worth millions of yen, don’t we?”

“Maybe someone is using Kid’s crimes to hide their own?”

“I don’t have enough evidence to say anything conclusively. How much time do we have left?”

Hakuba checked his watch. “Twenty point two five seconds.”

“Huh. Guess we’ll have to wing it, then.” Shinichi made the executive decision to chug his second bottle of coffee and toss the bottle in the trash. “Ready?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“In three, two, one, and…!”

Nothing.

Did something go wrong? Shinichi glanced at Hakuba, hoping this was normal for heists in Ekoda. His friend was gripping his watch tightly, knuckles white.

“I may have said he was as punctual as a train, but in Shakespeare’s words, _even the most capricious zephyr hath more sense than he,_ ” Hakuba said tersely.

Thankfully, Kid made his entrance then, not with a blackout but with a series of brightly colored, glittery smoke bombs and a cloud of doves. He gave a bow from atop a box that most certainly wasn’t there before, as police officers drew their batons and Shinichi reached into his bag.

“Thirteen point five seven seconds late,” Hakuba called, snapping his pocketwatch shut with a resonating click. “Should I assume some tragedy has befallen you along the way? You promised to be here at 12:30 _precisely_.”

“Aw, were you concerned for me?” Kid asked, feigning surprise. “I was forced to be fashionably late, since a detective of mine has rejected my wonderful gift. I used those thirteen seconds to shed a single tear in mourning for what could have been between us.”

“You mean you were late because you were busy pouting? Grow up, Kid.” It felt so good to get back at him for all the teasing of the past few weeks. Shinichi grinned. “Why don’t you just act your age and _get over it_.”

“How cruel,” Kid sniffed, one hand over his heart. “My ungrateful critics are teaming up on me. I’ll have you know, I’ve been committing crimes as long as you two have been alive! I simply retain the heart of a child.”

“I’m just supposed to believe you took a ten year hiatus?” Hakuba stepped forward, putting his watch away. “It seems far more likely that there was a previous--”

“Artist’s block,” Kid stated. Shinichi started inching sideways, trying to get behind the thief. The Task Force seemed to have left them to their banter, and was waiting near the actual jewelry case. Good. Hakuba and Kid continued their argument, each one talking over the other.

“--who instructed you, and was likely a relative--”

“--the sheer boredom and uninspired ideas that spring into being only to be discarded as easily as soap bubbles, the disaffected attempts to surpass my previous work, only to have my hopes cruelly dashed by reality--”

“--and that’s why it’s impossible, and therefore you would have to be around my age--”

“--suddenly, in a dream, it came to me! The realization that nothing had to change! And in my dream I reached out towards a gem like a forbidden star, and I held it in my hands and knew that I must return to--”

“--so terrible at your job! Can you even be called a thief when you defy every single one of my expectations? Or do you--”

“--my beloved city, and fortunately my fanbase has been quite welcoming to the recent changes in my style; you know how divisive they can be, sometime claiming sellouts or preferring the creator’s earlier work--”

Shinichi pulled out his third bottle of coffee, silently thanked it for its noble sacrifice, and drop kicked it at Kid’s back. 

The monologue about the creative process was abruptly cut short with a sound like a bird that had unexpectedly flown into a window. Kid stumbled, then tossed down a smoke bomb-- typical, ugh. There was a muffled cry in the smoke, then a thud.

That sounded like Hakuba’s voice, Shinichi realized. The smoke was still too thick to see anything, but when it cleared, he was relieved to see his friend safe.

“I saw him go for the stairs! He’s heading for the roof!”

“What about the gem?” Someone yelled.

Everyone’s eyes turned to the display case, where tonight’s target was gone. Shinichi scanned the crowd, looking for anyone out of place, anyone….oh. _Oh_. So that’s how Kid was going to play it tonight. Still, he didn’t have any proof.

“Impossible! He wasn’t anywhere near it!”

“Kid does the impossible all the time; how is this any different?”

“After him, men!” Inspector Nakamori yelled, leading a charge up the stairs.

...they were headed right for a trap, weren’t they. Shinichi sighed, rubbing his temple. Hakuba echoed the thought from behind him, and Shinichi turned.

“You moved awfully quietly,” he commented.

“It’s a skill I’ve had to pick up.” The two of them winced in sympathy at the clatter and rather creative swearing that issued from the staircase, and a mother clasped her hands over her preteen son’s ears, looking scandalized. Personally, Shinichi thought she should be more concerned about the example she was setting by normalizing and even romanticizing crime in front of her child, but hey, what did he know about parenting? 

“We’re not going to be able to make it up the stairs, are we.”

“There’s a back staircase,” Hakuba offered. “Come on, we should be able to catch up!”

That plan was foiled about five flights of stairs later, when both of them found themselves staring at a locked door. “Oh, come on!” Shinichi complained. “How is this even possible?”

“Anything’s possible with Kaitou Kid, you know.”

“He was supposed to be on the other side of the building!” Shinichi insisted. “And any avenues to chase him are left unlocked, since locking them would hinder the Task Force more than it would Kid! How could this happen?”

“He’s a master of planning. Don’t you think it was too much to ask that this staircase would be entirely free of traps? In any case, it doesn’t matter. I can take care of it, I think; I just need a few minutes.” He removed a small package from the inside of his coat, took out a pair of tools, and set to work.

“Lockpicks? Really?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t damage anything,” Hakuba assured him.

“It just seems like an unusual skill for a detective, doesn’t it?”

“And you haven’t bent the rules? I followed your career before you disappeared, you know. You could have been charged with multiple counts of assault if you were wrong in your speculations.”

“What about you?” Shinichi asked. “You’re usually not this good at running, are you?”

“And _you_ started taking the stairs two at a time. Strange; given your typical lack of coordination, one would think you’d take it slow, but you move as if that proportional distance is standard for you.”

“We’re chasing a thief, and you’re concerned about how I run up stairs?”

The door opened with a click, but Hakuba didn’t seem satisfied. Studying Shinichi, he asked, “You’re not related to that Edogawa kid, are you?”

“Distantly, yes. Why?”

“It’s strange… you share a lot of the same mannerisms, and yet he hasn’t made the news ever since you enrolled at Ekoda High. Really, the timelines between your appearances never overlap, and yet you both act like you’ve picked up habits from each other.”

“What exactly are you trying to imply?” Shinichi asked, reaching into his pocket. “I’m afraid I don’t follow your deduction.”

“I’m saying there’s something very suspicious about you, your head injury, and that seven year old relative of yours,” Hakuba stated plainly. “Like you said, our job as detectives is to find the truth, and I think you’ve been hiding something from me.”

“And what will you do with that information once you find it?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. There was a moment of silence between the two of them. “In any case, our priority right now is Kaitou Kid. You go ahead to the roof, and I’ll make sure he hasn’t doubled back and switched disguises.”

“Oh, but he already has. And I know who it is.”

“You do?” There was a hint of mischief in his eyes. “Well, who is it?

“Kaitou Kid’s disguise is...” Shinichi pointed. “You!”

Hakuba, or rather, Kid wearing Hakuba’s face, hummed thoughtfully. “What gave me away this time?”

“Hakuba-kun never gets suspicious of me.” 

“Really? He’s a detective, and you’ve literally called him Niichan in that cutesy voice of yours! How could he _not_ be suspicious?”

Shinichi winced; he’d been doing his best to forget the incident. “He still hasn’t learned to set aside personal bias, and that’s why he can’t see the whole truth.”

“Dang. I knew the Sherlock Holmes fandom was tight knit, but I had no idea it extended that far. He’s blatantly ignoring your suspicious behavior just for that reason, I’ll bet.” He raised a finger to his chin. “I wonder if the same goes for Arsene Lupin fans...”

“That’s what the platform was for, isn’t it? I thought you were just being extra and brought your own soapbox to stand on, but that was probably disguised as an exhibit. That’s how you overheard our conversation, too. When everyone was distracted, you moved it out and burst from the top, draping a cover over it. And it probably had a second purpose, too; you needed a quick costume change, so you knocked out Hakuba-kun and left him in there.”

“Well, I already had a copy of that tacky coat he loves to wear so much, so why not? He’s got a night light in there, and a blanket in case he gets cold,” Kid pointed out. “But you’re right. Normally I prefer to leave people in bathroom stalls when I borrow their identities, but tonight I realized I had to step up my game.”

“All that just for me? How sweet.” Shinichi withdrew his tranquilizer watch from his pocket, flipping up the scope. _“You ruined my plans for tonight.”_

His dart hit Hakuba’s discarded clothing as Kid changed disguises and fled up the last flight of stairs, his laughter echoing in Shinichi’s ears.

***

It wasn’t until he reached the rooftop and saw Kid empty handed that he put the pieces together.

“You never stole the gem at all, did you?” Shinichi asked. He took the smug silence as confirmation, and continued. “I thought something was strange about the heist note, and this confirms it. The curator sold the gem off years ago, and you know that it’ll be checked for legitimacy after the heist, as the gems always are. Then, you can reveal that you never stole it in the first place, and since you have a reputation of at least some degree of honesty, people will start to investigate, and the curator will panic. All of the publicity from the heist will fall on him, and his whole scheme will fall apart under a bit of suspicion.”

“You know, I have a tendency to collect detectives, but I think you’re my favorite. Don’t tell the others, though, or they’ll get jealous.”

“What’s the point of even feigning a heist tonight, though? It’s a fake, which means it’s clearly not the one you’re looking for, and no one challenged you.”

“You’re not the only one who’s achieved his goals, tantei-kun,” he said slyly. “Remember when I stole a diamond known as the Stardust Crystal?”

“Of course not. I have better things to do than keep up with all the things you steal!”

“Hm. Well, see, I never returned that. It turned out that was the one I was looking for, and it may have contained some less than savory things. The owner agreed that it was for the best if it was smashed into little bits, doused in fire extinguisher foam, and handled by a cleanup crew in hazmat suits who treated it exactly as they would hazardous nuclear waste. The gem I returned was a perfectly harmless fake that was personally verified by the owner, as we agreed.”

“You were looking for something that nasty, huh.”

“Oh, and you haven’t even heard about the fight over it, have you?” He tilted his head coyly. “I got shot twice!”

“You seem awfully smug about that,” Shinichi noted dryly. “That’s not a typical reaction to getting shot.”

“Bulletproof vest and some blood packets to fake my death. You should have _seen_ their faces; it was hilarious. Even better when they were finally caught, after all these years…” A crack appeared in his usual façade, a hint of nostalgia creeping in before he returned to his usual act. “In any case, to answer your question, I thought my special brand of justice was still required in the world. While we may be diametrically opposed in our methods, our central goals remain the same. I shall reveal the truth from the cover of moonlight, while you bring light to the shadows of the day!”

“Half the time, I don’t think even _you_ understand the terrible poetry that spews from your mouth.”

“Like I said, critics can’t truly appreciate art forms. Alas, we are two sides of the same coin...”

It actually _didn’t_ sound like a terrible plan, not too dissimilar from Shinichi’s own attempts at bluffing culprits into revealing information, but he wanted to disagree on principle because Kid was just being such an infuriating little bastard about it. The Germans probably had a word to describe that feeling, now that he thought about it.

“You’re not a terrible person, and you’re pretty observant. You could just hang up your mantle and become a detective if you wanted to bring truth.” Shinichi put his hands in his pockets, striding confidently across the rooftop. “I think you just like the adrenaline rush that comes from rebellion, and you’ll find a way to justify and rationalize your actions no matter what.”

“Is that so?” Kid quirked an eyebrow up, so that it was barely visible within the shadows of his hat. He leaned in until they were nose to nose, close enough that Shinichi could feel his uncomfortably warm breath. “I think-“

Shinichi did the first thing he could think of and kicked him in the shin as hard as he could. The thief let out a choked gasp of surprise, eyes going comically wide, and collapsed like a sack of bricks. 

Oops. As Conan, there wasn’t much in kicking reach, so he guessed he’d just defaulted to that. He hadn’t meant it, but years of experience had given him what he considered a healthy reflex in regards to personal space. Maybe he’d have to ask Ran to teach him how to better utilize his kicks? It would be a good way for them to reconnect, and for him to learn some actual self defense. 

“Stop being dramatic,” Shinichi complained when Kid didn’t get up after a few minutes of whimpering in pain. “It’s bad enough I’m not allowed to catch you; now you’re just taunting me. Get up before the task force arrives and thinks I’m an accomplice.”

“Get up?!? I’m pretty sure you broke my leg!” he cried, gesturing to what he clearly thought was a crippling injury.

“Serves you right for making comments about my legs earlier!”

“I take them all back, then! They’re stupid legs, and I hate them. But you didn’t have to break mine out of jealousy!”

“Why would I be jealous of your legs?”

“Because I have the legs to pull off a miniskirt,” he said, narrowing his eyes and pointing dramatically, “and _you_ . _Never. Will._ ”

With that, he threw down what must have been every smoke bomb in his arsenal. When the air was clear again, there were at least five hang gliders in the sky, all headed in different directions and moving away from the rooftop.

“I don’t even see why I’d want to wear a miniskirt,” Shinichi muttered, turning back just in time to see the Task Force bursting through the door. It wasn’t Shinichi’s fault that he hadn’t had much body hair as a kid and was a little freaked out by it sometimes, and it certainly didn’t help that his main point of reference shaved often in order to crossdress.

“I lost him, but I don’t think he stole the gem,” Shinichi said, pointedly ignoring the officer who’d crept from behind the door and walked with a slight limp. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to find my friend. And check the display case.”

***

It turned out he’d severely bruised the magician’s tibia, and kept getting glares and passive aggressive requests to help with basic tasks like holding doors and fetching his crutches. At least it hadn’t fractured, and it was supposed to heal in a week or so.

Shinichi tried to apologize for that, since he didn’t mean to injure him, but apparently accepting an apology meant that his housemate couldn’t guilt trip him any more. At least the offer was out there. 

“Why must you enforce your personal space with violence?” He moaned, sprawled across the couch with a tub of rocky road ice cream in his hands.

Shinichi provided him with an alphabetized list of every criminal who’d attempted to harm and/or abduct him. That discussion promptly ended, and Shinichi secretly grinned at the fact that all of the potentially traumatizing and dangerous situations he’d lived through let him win an argument. Every cloud had a silver lining, after all.

***

“Hey, do you ever think you parents might be doing something wrong?”

Shinichi shut his textbook with a snap. “If this is some sort of insinuation that I’m like this because my parents made a mistake in parenting me, I’m going to--”

“No, for real this time.” He held up his hands placatingly. “Is it normal for one of your parents to impersonate someone-- an impossible someone-- in order to convince you to leave behind your dangerous lifestyle and go to America with them? Even if what they do leaves you doubting your own sanity and completely shatters your sense of security? It feels like a breach of trust, but maybe it’s more common than I think and no one ever talks about it.”

“I mean, there was the time my dad decided to cosplay as the villain protagonist of his novels and kidnap me. I was a little too concerned with my imminent death to notice that the gun was fake. But none of my friends have ever gone through anything like that; even if they tried to hide it, I’d probably know. So it can happen, but it’s not normal. Really, I don’t think my family should ever be the standard for normal,” he said thoughtfully. “Probably explains why my parents got along so well with yours.”

“Yeah, I threw normal out the window a long time ago. Just checking.” And then, because of course he was incapable of holding an honest conversation: “So, by friends do you mean the grade schoolers you hang out with, or the popular high school extrovert who took pity on you and adopted you into her social circle?”

“I _swear--_ ”

***

Aoko had never seen anyone snap like this until today.

“My life isn’t worth this,” Kudo said in an awed voice, like he’d just realized this. He set down his pencil with a sharp click. “What am I even doing here? I’ve spent too much time running from my problems, and I can’t ever get anywhere if that’s all I do.”

“So what are you planning to do?” Aoko asked him. Granted, she wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but if her friend was having some sort of life altering revelation, she wanted to know.

He stood, oblivious to the entire class’s attention on him. “I’m going to confess _everything_ to the girl I love-- I’ve put it off long enough, and you never know when something awful could happen to you that ruins your entire life and forces you to leave everything you love behind! Who’s to say it couldn’t happen again? I’ve wasted too much time on things that don’t matter, keeping secrets for other people, but I can’t give up on the truth. And I can’t give up on her, either.”

A round of confused applause accompanied him as he packed his things and walked out the door, with all the confidence of someone who knew with absolute certainty what he was going to do with his life. The teacher, who at this point was too numb to her students’ antics to even care that one of her students was walking out and likely never returning, politely joined in clapping.

“Didn’t he once say the girl he’s confessing to knows karate?” Aoko asked quietly once he was gone.

“Yep. And he’s been lying to her for a little over a year now!” Kaito shot her a pair of finger guns. “Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that conversation...or, failing that, just another face in the crowd!” 

“If you’re about to toss down a smoke bomb and follow him, I swear--”

“Aw, you know me so well.” He was gone before Aoko could even grab the mop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shinichi, trying to make Hattori and Hakuba get along because both of them are his friends: guys please, do it for me!  
> Kaitou Kid, from a nearby rooftop: or do it for me! I’m sure all three of you working together would be one heck of an adrenaline rush~
> 
> Anyways, that's all. Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a comment or something; I am fueled by feedback and pasta.


End file.
